A. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for analyzing seed and to make decisions about the seed and its subsequent use based on the analysis, and in particular, apparatuses for efficient and effective removal of specific seed tissue or structure to enable testing and analysis of the seed or its removed tissue or structure.
B. Problems in the Art
A primary goal of seed companies is to develop seed that grow into plants that are commercially desirable to crop producers. Seed companies devote substantial resources towards research and development of commercially desirable seed.
Conventional research and development techniques tend to be laborious and require vast amounts of land and space. All or much of the seed involved in the research is planted in research plots. After plants emerge from the seed, tissue samples from each plant are acquired. The tissue samples are transported to a laboratory to deduce information needed for the research and development of the seed and plants from the seed.
These methods are well-known in the industry. The resource costs of land, labor, and machinery are substantial.
Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of acres of experimental plots can be utilized. Appropriate numbers of workers and machinery to till, plant, maintain, obtain plant tissue samples, transport to the lab, and conduct analyses at the lab, are substantial. Time is also a factor and cost. Decisions about whether a plant and its seed should be used for producing commercial quantities or seed, or should be used in further research, have to wait until tissue samples from emerged plants are possible.
A typical process is as follows. Seed of known parentage, phenotype, or genotype are planted in experimental plots outdoors or in greenhouses. A statistically valid number of plants must be grown in the fields or greenhouses. This involves substantial physical space and labor. After the plants have emerged, tissue samples are taken from the plant. Tests are conducted to identify the genetic makeup or other characteristics of the sample. This process, of course, takes substantial time. The plants must grow to a point where a tissue sample can nondestructively be taken. The samples must be carefully handled and taken to a laboratory. Genetic testing must be conducted before identification of a gene of interest can be made.
It could be beneficial to have a process whereby access to and testing (genetically or otherwise) of relevant genetic material, or tissues, parts, or structures, could be gained without having to grow plants from the seed. As can be appreciated by the skilled artisan, savings in labor, time and space could be substantial.
Obtaining a tissue sample with relevant cellular material from most growing plants is not difficult. Conventionally, a relatively small portion or sample of tissue from a growing plant is removed with a tool (e.g., manually operated leaf punch). If properly done, the removal of the samples is non-destructive, in the sense that a small leaf punch normally does not materially affect the health or viability of the plant. A leaf punch, for example, is used to remove relevant cells for analysis of the plant. Although such leaf samples are not destructive of the plant and are relatively easy to transport to the laboratory and to store, obtaining a plant tissue sample from the normal quantity of plants in seed company experimental plots remains a huge commitment of labor and time. It requires going to each plant in the growing locations and acquiring the leaf sample.
The seed from which the test plot plants are grown also has relevant cellular material. It is quite another matter, however, to gain access to it and perform tests or assays on it without materially affecting the seed's viability or germination potential. The relatively small size of most seed, and its parts, is one reason. Another is that relevant tissue or structure in some seed is only a subset of the whole seed, and many times is inside an outer cover. This makes it difficult to gain access to or acquire only relevant material. Furthermore, some seed have a make-up which makes non-destructive sampling difficult. The tough exterior layer or tissue, the pericarp, of corn seed is an example. It is difficult to remove without using methods that destroy or damage the seed. Still further, all of these issues are antagonistic to high throughput access to and sampling of multiple seed. Precise removal of specific tissue or structure from a small object to gain access to other specific tissue or structure, and doing so efficiently, presents significant challenges.
Therefore, a need exists in the industry to materially reduce the resources used for evaluating plants and their seed for potential commercial production or further use in plant and seed research and development. There is also a need in the art for apparatuses to remove from and/or gain access to specific tissues or structures of a seed, including in a non-destructive and relatively high throughput way.